Angel (For Lowell Hildebrand)

Lowell Hildebrand, I remember you! 
You made it possible for me to go to Wabash
against my mother’s wishes,
though you were her friend from college.
You didn’t know
she called Harry Cotton: Satan! in return 

 
He would have been surprised
and then amused. 
Indeed, she judged Wabash “godless,”
said the same about Yale Divinity
and would surely have voted for Trump,
she was so incensed.

The story is: When I was seven years old,
I was asked to become a doctor when grown up
and go to Sierra Leone.
That was her dream: It would give her status
in return for all her sacrifice 
which, itself, was real. 

I killed her dream when I chose to go to Wabash.
Worse yet, I was not ashamed.

Still, you need to know
that Wabash was life to me. No exaggeration.
I would not be who I am today,
or done what I have done and for which I’m proud,
in the end becoming a poet.

I am in your debt precisely for any good I’ve done:
the government work and the poems.
I hope you can understand
that to that extent,
I am your son… given second birth as an Alum
to my second Mater.

So, Lowell, I thank you, I thank you. 

From your late born son.